From changes to teacher evaluation to the inner workings of the teachers’ unions, reporter Madeline Will keeps you up to date on the biggest issues shaping the teaching profession today.

Here's a fairly big feather in the teachers' unions' let's-organize-charter-schools cap: Leo Casey at EdWize reports that a majority of teachers at a KIPP school in Brooklyn have decided to unionize and signed authorization cards with the United Federation of Teachers. This is significant news because unions have long struggled to bring charter schools into their fold without much success. New Orleans, where the teachers' union has been struggling to survive, is one of the more obvious examples of this. On the other hand, this is the second major piece of news in under two months on big-city charters going ...

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee's confirmation hearing for Arne Duncan, President-Elect Obama's nominee for Education Secretary, is focusing heavily on teacher-quality issues. You can watch it now at http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2009_01_13/2009_01_13.html, or check in with us later when we'll bring you more details....

As inauguration fever grips many citizens in this nation, the two teachers' unions are giving teachers some help with bringing the Jan. 20 event into the classroom with a joint offering lesson plans on inaugural history. The guides, available here are designed to teach students about the history of Inauguration Day, and include information about the 2009 schedule of events and background about traditional inaugural ceremonies. The guides also suggest ways to supplement the lessons with discussion topics, films, books, and other educational Web sites. Students can, among other activities, compare and contrast the backgrounds of the two presidents from ...

Here's an interesting tidbit: K-8 teachers would, apparently, like to see Barack Obama as "Principal for a Day." Chicago-based educational publishing group Northpoint Horizons surveyed about 1,400 teachers on various aspects of education, including what supports and strategies they feel they need to be successful educators. But the question on principal for a day is indeed telling: Obama won three times as many votes as any other nominee. The top-10 vote getters also included Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Franklin, and John F. Kennedy. There's no ...

The nose-diving economy has brought out the creative side of lawmakers trying to solve long-running problems in schools, like teacher retention. In Utah, where a study found that more than half the teachers who left their jobs in 2006-07 have taught for less than five years, a lawmaker is sponsoring a bill that would make home-buying more affordable for new teachers, thereby giving them an incentive to stay on. Teachers in their first five years on the job would get $15,000 loans to buy homes. They would pay interest on the loans, but the $15,000 principal would be ...

A merger between the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers? Now that's one we haven't heard in almost a decade, since efforts to bring the two teachers' unions under a single umbrella were quashed by the NEA's Representative Assembly. But this week, after the presidents of 12 labor unions issued a joint call for unification when President-elect Barack Obama's transition office said that it would prefer dealing with a united labor movement, there's been some speculation over whether this might also translate into a teachers' union merger. The New York Times had this quote from Randi Weingarten, ...

NCLB turned 7 yesterday. Teachers, for the most part, dislike the law for what they see as an overemphasis on standardized testing, the pushing of blame for school failure on teachers, and the punishment of schools with sanctions. Underneath all that, teachers felt frustrated at not having been consulted during the law's creation in 2001, when the unions were largely left out of the negotiations. There's certainly a theme of teacher consultation and collaboration in the American Federation of Teachers' press release on the law's 7th anniversary: "For the past seven years, NCLB has become a stand-in for real discussions ...

The last few months have seen a barrage of announcements on education budget cuts in states and school districts teetering under the recession. Now comes news that the nation's second-largest school district, Los Angeles, could be laying off as many as 2,300 teachers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the state deficit has created a shortfall of at least $250 million in the school district's nearly $6 billion budget, prompting officials to propose sending layoff notices to 1,690 elementary school teachers and 600 math and English teachers in middle and high schools. Teachers most likely to lose their ...

Hopefully by now you've checked out Much Ado About Professional Development per this Bill Turque story in the Washington Post. It must be said: The intrepid bloggers here at Teacher Beat reported Ms. Rhee's plans for PD quite some time ago. Still, I'm glad to see that PD, generally considered a wonky and mushy topic, is getting some real attention for a change. (Although maybe this story in part reflects the current vogue for all things Rhee--everything from her clothes to her dating life has been generating attention.) The central debate in the Post story centers on the fact that ...

If you haven't taken a look at Kevin Carey's recent musings on Finland's highly praised K-12 education system over at The Quick and the Ed, do so now: they're well worth reading and timely for those of you interested in teacher policy. Why? Well, President-elect Obama, key adviser Linda-Darling Hammond, Arne Duncan and others have talked about improving assessment, offering more flexibility in assessment, etc. Though it's not entirely clear what that means policywise, Darling-Hammond for one is a fan of locally based, frequently non-standardized assessments that give richer information on student achievement. She often notes that Finland uses these ...